Top 58 Quotes & Sayings by Nellie McKay

I'm not sure I know how to make music anymore. Maybe you're given a window into things for a time, and beyond that maybe it goes away. Why should you expect it to stay?

I tried to be just a singer of standards when I was starting out. And there was nothing special enough about my voice to make it that far. So I feel a bit like Rod Stewart. Once you've had that rock career, people will give you that chance where otherwise they might not.

I'm pretty indiscriminating, and I have awful taste, generally.

There's a side of me that identifies with Aileen Wuornos.

I never know how to get off the phone, so I'm terribly admiring of people who can.

You know, if I can survive marching band, I can survive anything.

In high school, I was always into Jerry Lee Lewis, and they decided they needed a piano player for the jazz band. I had my little boogie-woogie thing that I did, so I did my little boogie-woogie thing. I had a very high-pitched voice.

I have trouble with any kind of focus or concentrating, or getting anything done at all, really.

I kind of go for the MGM version of every musical style.

Public radio is the last oasis of free and independent music. For satellite radio channels, you have to subscribe; commercial stations are as corporate as basic cable.

The other kids wanted to play Destiny's Child, but I wanted Anita O'Day.

I really don't care what people say. It's amazing that feminism continues to exist at all, considering how much counter-feminism is out there.

I love writing for dancers. You don't have to worry about the lyrics. I think to write words without music must be so frustrating. It must be always be so good, so perfect.

I'm glad if people can listen to some music and maybe fix some prejudices of their own, just by thinking.

In the hierarchy of instruments, if you're a harpist, you're considered someone with a brain much more than if you're a singer.

Music can make the cerebral accessible, the subconscious hummable. It communicates our shared needs and desires as sentient beings better than any other medium.

I used to play in the subway. If everyone tossed in a quarter, at the end of the day it would add up. It shows you aren't invisible. And it's better than being ignored, or kicked in the head, or worse.

In New York City, when they develop something, they never use the old buildings. It's so wasteful. Why not use what's there?

Love is such a fleeting emotion. It's such a small part of the things you do in your life.

You can criticize something you strive for, and you can avoid something you dream about.

It's always so nerve-wracking being up there on stage. It's even harder playing in your hometown - and I have a couple of home towns - but, you're playing for all the people you knew in high school, so it causes no small degree of panic in my mind.

I thought I had a talent for alienating people, but I have no idea what it is that doesn't go over.

If we went back to the basics of vegetables, legumes, grains - the things closer to the Earth - it's a lot better for the Earth and for other people. We can feed more people, we can feed the starving people.

I think there are nice things about every era. I wish we could just take the nice things.

I don't listen to much rap, really. I can rarely listen to a whole record of it, because musically, it's very formulaic, and oftentimes it doesn't have the best hooks on every track.

I'd love to give my music to someone who really likes to wow the crowd. I feel like half the time I just want to hide in the dressing room!

I think I have advanced ADD.

You know, I wanted to get married, and so I - but I, you know, I realize no matter what you want, it's kind of a fantasy.

I guess you deal with what you get.

Less money for public media means less access to the arts.

If you look through the century, certain things have gotten better and certain things have gotten worse. I wouldn't say overall that things have gotten better. I think you could say things have gotten worse, but I don't think you could say that things have gotten better. Overall. You can't say that.

Toronto's a delightful city.

I will say that art may well be the only thing that lasts, so I guess it's worth trying.

I was in school for jazz voice, which is the dumbest way to spend $35,000 a year. I just felt like a rip-off of good jazz singers. I didn't feel like I was being anything special, and I always wanted to be special. It's like you know you have something inside you that's gonna make you different than everybody else and make you somebody in this life, but you wish you could figure out what it is, because at most things, you're either mediocre or really, really bad.

I got sent off to my grandmother's for five months and watched a lot of TV and had a lot of grilled cheese with butter on it - because she was English and put lots of butter on everything - and yogurt. The English are big on dairy products, you know? I'd have an earache, and she'd be like, "Here, have some milk." Wonderful woman, but she had kind of screwed-up nutrition ideas.

I think people at most record labels really like music, but it's hard because everything is so subjective, and everyone's so creative in their own right.

I'd been knocking on record companies' doors for so long, and I had gone on a lot of auditions. It's weird when you go to those auditions through the Village Voice or something. You never know what to expect. You just press Floor 3 on the elevator and pray that it's not... You know, anyone can place an ad, so it's really freaky.

I was approaching adolescence. For some reason, I guess my mother thought it would be less crazy out in the suburbs, which it wasn't. I just think adolescence is hard for anyone.

If you're dissatisfied anywhere, New York is the place to be. If you're unhappy at college in Topeka, I don't know what there is to distract yourself with, you know? So anyway, I distracted myself until I decided that the distraction could be a school in and of itself.

It was not very hard to do a double album. Nobody thinks it's a good idea if you're an unknown singer-songwriter. But I just kind of feel like if I want something, I can get it. That's the good side of being American, or something, you know?

My mom. She really encouraged me. That's the trouble with education: Unless you have a really supportive parent, you get left behind.

You have to reflect honestly what's around you in your music. I think a lot of people are just obsessed with their own relationships, so that is an honest reflection of what they see. A lot of people don't go much deeper than that.

I'm just kind of sick of music. I don't know what I want to do. It's not that I feel suicidal or anything, but I just want to end this life. I just want to be somebody else now. Sometimes I feel like that. You always think, "If I just cut my hair really short and dye it brown and put on a little goatee, no one would know it was me, and I could..."

As long as you have imagination, you never need to work. You never get bored. You could just walk around and go to museums and check out new movies. You could be busy in New York city for 10,000 years.

I'm getting offers for movie stuff. But it shows how facile the movie industry is. I mean, they don't know I can act. I guess they like my record and think I have a nice complexion? I don't know. How many people work and wait tables to get that break? I really don't feel entitled. Everything's so corrupt, you know? Especially the tastemakers. I trust the American public much more than the tastemakers.

I'm glad I got a record contract, because all of a sudden everything you were doing before that made you a stupid person now makes you a smart person.

I do think there's a great deal of politics mixed in rap. Their reference to the real world is much better than most, particularly a lot of women who seem like all they do is sing about love. Love is such a fleeting emotion. It's such a small part of the things you do in your life. I don't understand why that's all they concentrate on, except that that's what they're encouraged to do, because if you keep thinking about love, you'll be less of a challenge. I like that about rap. It's got power to it.

I don't listen to much rap, really. I can rarely listen to a whole record of it, because musically, it's very formulaic, and oftentimes it doesn't have the best hooks on every track. I like my music to be very musical.

What people generally tell you is, "We'll all agree," and then once you sign, they expect to get their own way. I think it was a bit of a surprise that I was still very headstrong even after signing. I wasn't so happy to get a deal that I would agree to anything. In fact, I disagreed on most things and got my way on most things, which I think was to all of our benefit. But they wanted the record to come out, and I wanted the record to come out, so we had to work together.

There are so many people that do things better than I do: dancing, singing like a black girl, singing country. Or if, while they sing, they move their arms in and around their crotch; when I sing, I play the piano and look like a little choirgirl. I'd like to mix it up like that.

Precocious and eccentric are okay. But I think that people in the arts represent something integral and kind of secretive in everybody else. So the reason people like some artists is because they're saying or doing something that they would like to do or say, but they don't have the balls or the means. People are really afraid to put their ass on the line. Just to put your face on a poster and put your name in big print and say "Come see me," that takes some cojones, you know? Ambition is nothing to be ashamed of.

In the hierarchy of instruments, if you're a harpist, you're considered someone with a brain much more than if you're a singer. Even though singers, particularly singers who can play piano... If you go to the office of career development, you can get a gig much easier. Still, musicians tend to look down on you. I think they've got some nerve, because if they could sing, they would do it, but most of them can't.

In terms of content, a lot of rap is crap, with all the sexism and homophobic bullshit. It's incredible how rappers are always preaching nonconformity - you know, "I'm just gonna go my own way and be my own man and blah blah blah" - but they're the first ones to do so many things that they have to do. They have to do that hip-hop thing, a certain way of walking, and it's so conformist.

I was never pop-music taken seriously when I was taught. But some people who agree with you will like your music, and some who don't agree with you will like your music. I think that if you can approach things in a universal fashion and speak rationally about things, then most people do have similar intrinsic values. They don't - or at least they feel that they shouldn't - want other people to suffer. They want a good life for them and their own.

The civilised cultures are the most cruel. It's the same with education - often it breeds sadistic forms of cruelty.

While a lot of my day, like most people's, is spent thinking about me, I can see how it's a universal thing: the competition, the clashes of personality that fuel the world and fill the world, are the exact same ones that take place just between two people. I just think politics is a form, en masse, of human relations.

I feel like you should always be questioning the genre you're doing. If you're doing something that sounds like a lullaby, it can be good to make it about someone stalking someone.

Just like everything, even the most fun and creative endeavor requires work to be successful, and I'm so sick of working. I'm a lazy person at heart. I never meant to be a go-getter.